Dhaka, Oct. 20 -- A Japanese-led spacecraft has lifted off on a pioneering mission to collect samples from the two moons of Mars, aiming to resolve one of the solar system's enduring mysteries.

The Martian Moons eXploration, or MMX, spacecraft launched aboard an H3 rocket from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Tanegashima Space Center in southwestern Japan on Tuesday local time, CNN reported.

The mission -- an international collaboration involving NASA, the European Space Agency, and the space agencies of France and Germany -- will spend roughly a year travelling to Mars before spending three years orbiting Phobos, the larger of the two moons. It aims to return more than 10 grams of material from Phobos' surface to Earth by 2031....